220 Stories of Dust

By Abel Ashes (All rights reserved)

Everything burst like a piñata filled with gunpowder.
110 stories of concrete exploded into dust like a mountain transforming into powdered chalk then rushing to the ground like a violently ruptured sack of flour.
Broken steel beams shot out of the clouds of dust at horizontal and diagonal angles like missiles launched by lunatics.
Broken steel beams shot out of the clouds of dust that once, mere seconds before, were floors and walls.
The tower burst like a dark gray, slow-motion atomic mushroom cloud on an anarchic elevator descending into hell.
Clouds of concrete, asbestos, plastic, paper and human remains roared down the avenues like a tsunami of destruction overwhelming everything in its path.
A monsoon of hot dust and flying debris wrapped the survivors in whitish-gray shrouds like the mummified corpses of Pharaohs.
In this tragic waking nightmare they slowly rose like coughing, choking zombies from graves of toxic snow.
Manhattan was choking on 110 stories of pulverized concrete dust as 110 more stories rumbled to the ground enveloping the city in fear, sorrow and silence.